{"id":514,"date":"2008-12-28T18:26:45","date_gmt":"2008-12-28T23:26:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/?p=514"},"modified":"2008-12-28T18:30:59","modified_gmt":"2008-12-28T23:30:59","slug":"perceptual-flow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/?p=514","title":{"rendered":"Aesthetic flow"},"content":{"rendered":"

People enjoy looking at things that have symmetry and order – but not too much. Beauty requires an interplay between pattern and chaos. I touched briefly upon this in my October 10 post about a misguided use of computer software to “beautify” the human face by making its features more regular (and therefore more bland).<\/p>\n

But I wonder, as I look at a snowflake, or a leaf or sunset or candle flame, or in fact, the face of someone I find lovely to behold, are there principles at work here? Just as Mihaly Cs\u00edkszentmih\u00e1lyi spoke of humans being happiest when in a state of “flow” in which things are neither too easy (ie: boring) nor too difficult (ie: frustrating), perhaps there is an equivalent state of aesthetic flow, in which the things we perceive are neither too regular\/symmetric nor too chaotic\/asymmetric.<\/p>\n

There is plentiful evidence that people respond positively to artful assymmetry within a symmetric structure. The genius of great composers from Bach to the Beatles is clearly entwined with their ability to surprise us, to bring a melody or harmonic progression to some wholy unexpected place, while somehow making it all sound right.<\/p>\n

Case in point: the second Beatles song that Paul McCartney ever wrote was “I’ll Follow the Sun” (the first was “When I’m Sixty Four” – he composed both songs when he was only sixteen). By the third note of the melody – the flattened E atop an F7 chord (at the word “you’ll” in the lyric “One day you’ll look”) – he has already broken the rules. Right off the bat the melody jumps clean out of the key of C to god only knows where. But he then uses the momentum from that crazily asymmetric choice to launch a lovely and unforgettable tune that ends up sounding not just right but inevitable.<\/p>\n

It’s one of those moments that heralds a new kid on the block, a fresh new talent, like Bobby Fischer at the tender age of thirteen sacrificing his queen in his famous game against Donald Byrne – and thereby ensuring a stunning upset victory. That game was outstandingly beautiful because<\/i> it was outstandingly unexpected, in addition to being brilliant.<\/p>\n

On a much more humble scale, I embedded controlled chaos in one of the first computer graphic objects I ever synthesized – a marble vase. I was drawn to the sense of capturing a raging storm within the placid curved surface of a classically sculpted form, and I developed a whole set of techniques that would allow me to express such controlled chaos:<\/p>\n


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I wonder whether there is any way to calibrate this relationship – to find some formal measure of chaos versus symmetry in any given situation, and then use that ratio to predict a rough measure of potential beauty?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

People enjoy looking at things that have symmetry and order – but not too much. Beauty requires an interplay between pattern and chaos. I touched briefly upon this in my October 10 post about a misguided use of computer software to “beautify” the human face by making its features more regular (and therefore more bland). … Continue reading “Aesthetic flow”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}